The partnership, creative collaboration, and friendship between The Yellowstone Center for Faith, Adventure, and the Arts and Raison D’être Dance Project is foundational to the success and development of RDE. From shared space to mutual artistic inspiration, RDE would not be what it is today without The Yellowstone Center.
For dancers, the studio is a sacred space. Through sweat, tears, laughter, and blood, this is where the trials and tribulations of everyday human existence transform into expressive movement. The studio is where we come together to grieve, celebrate, uplift one another, and above all build community through creating art.
For four years—from 2019-2023—The Yellowstone Center provided us with this home. The studio on Stadium Drive with its huge windows overlooking a grassy field and the distant snowcapped peaks was the birthplace of some of our most monumental works and moments as a company.
In 2019, we began work on what would prove to be a four year saga developing RACHMANINOV + PLUTONIA. Originally slated to premiere in 2020, the project was interrupted by COVID. Returning to the studio in the aftermath of the pandemic was a strange and sometimes rough transition. Instead of jumping right back into preparations for the big show, we decided to create an entirely new concept based on what we had all just collectively experienced. This became an abstract collection of works entitled Excerpts & Suites. Unintentionally, this show felt like a way of processing what it had been like to be devoid of our life’s blood, which is creating art together in a shared space.
One of the pieces included in Excerpts & Suites was Afterthought, with music composed by none other than Dr. Jay Smith. When asked about the inspiration behind the piece, Dr. Smith wrote the following: “Afterthought reflects the malady of the wandering mind. When engaged in listening to a sermon one Sunday morning, my mind wandered and started composing a soundtrack to the impressions I was experiencing. Pretty quickly, the actual words to the sermon functioned as an afterthought to the soundtrack running in my head. The music is the content and file to my experience. The panoramic visual interpretation of RDE brings life to the soundtrack.”
The music—which is a mixed quintet for flute, clarinet, trumpet, cello and percussion—challenged RDE choreographers to create something whimsical, quirky, contemplative, dreamlike, and jazzy. It helped pull us out of the creative fog that had settled as a result of not being able to be in the studio for so many months. Being back in our studio home, collaborating with musicians once again and working towards a performance to share with an audience in the theater for the first time in over a year was something we will never forget.
After Excerpts & Suites, we were able to return to our massive undertaking of RACHMANINOV + PLUTONIA with renewed determination and vigor, finally premiering the epic piece in June 2022. We could never have gotten through it without the partnership with The Yellowstone Center. Although we don’t share physical space anymore, we continue to value our creative alignment and mutual support. We encourage each other’s endeavours in choreography and composition, and have creative collaborations yet to come.
RDE will be celebrating its 10th anniversary in 2027—and we can’t wait to share in the joy with our wonderful friends at The Yellowstone Center.